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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30007638">Supernatural 3.03 review</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian'>yourlibrarian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Supernatural Reviews [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Episode Review, Episode: s03e03 Bad Day at Black Rock, Gen, Nonfiction</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 10:09:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,098</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30007638</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally posted October 19, 2007.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Supernatural Reviews [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2202249</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>March Meta Matters Challenge</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Supernatural 3.03 review</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I haven't read any other reviews yet though I plan to scope them out this weekend. I have this suspicion that some people wouldn't be very happy with this episode. Me? I loved it.</p><p>One of the things I think this episode did well is juggle a lot of different plot balls in one episode in a very effective manner. Even though I thought the previous episode was clumsily written I liked the way it balanced the continuing arc with the standalone story and character development. This episode was light on character but heavy on plot. And I just loved the way it brought the funny.</p><p>To take it from the top we have several interesting revelations. First, clearly Ruby and Sam did more talking than we heard because he knows (and finally conveys) her name. Second Sam is revealing some secrets while keeping others close to the vest. And from Sam's point of view what he reveals versus what he conceals seems quite consistent. Sam has yet to tell Dean what he learned about Mary from the YED. Now he keeps Ruby's additional details silent. Why? I think it's because Sam is still suspicious of the truth of these allegations. Dean is accusing him of trusting Ruby but I think Sam's silence on this matter speaks pretty clearly to the fact that he doesn't. It may also speak to his fear of admitting that this is all his fault. But really, given all Dean has been willing to sacrifice, I don't think Sam fears losing his brother over it. Rather, I think he fears hurting Dean, to whom Mary meant more than she did to Sam.</p><p>Instead Sam tells him about Ruby and about the possibility of breaking the deal. Why? Because Ruby is dangerous and Sam doesn't want Dean blindsided by what she is. Second, he wants Dean to keep hope alive. And lastly, as he says to Dean, they are in the dark about the demon invasion. It's worth risking lies to have a chance at some truth. All in all, I find it hard to argue with Sam's logic.</p><p>Just as another note, I really liked the way that scene was both written and played. To some degree it was exposition, but it didn't feel like it. It felt like a genuine argument about tactics between them and JP did a good job in expressing both concern and irritation.</p><p>So next we get the call about John's storage room. I can only assume that this is going to come into play in the future, maybe near the end of the season. Because there was really no need to have this thing connected to John, this could just have been some other case. If anything, the fact that it's connected to John is absurdly awkward, something that gets a lantern hung on it as Sam and Dean open the door. Really, what does it say about John's confidence in Dean that he knew nothing about it when Bobby did and even made the boxes for John? I can easily see Sam not knowing –- Sam didn't care and after a while he was gone. But Dean? I can fanwank it that in his early years of hunting with John that Dean was left out of a lot because he split his time out with John and overseeing Sam. But once Sam left? What kind of partnership did they have in those 3+ years?</p><p>As if in contrast to that rather telling silence, we have Sam's 1995 soccer division championship trophy, and Dean's gun in sixth grade, making their souvenirs from their early teen years. Did both of them think these items had been lost in some move? Also, I'm guessing that the trophy indicates that there were times when the Winchesters stayed put for a year or so over the course of their childhoods. John, at least, cared enough to save these items. I'm curious what else is in that place along with the weapons, souvenirs and cursed objects.</p><p>How would the thieves know which box they needed to steal? They look the same and they didn't know what was in it because they didn't open it until later. Those ghosts of Bela's must have been awfully specific.</p><p>So Sam and Dean follow the car's license plates (recorded at the scene I take it) back to the apartment. I loved the action sequence that came next (and I bet they really enjoyed playing a fight scene for laughs). Both of them were great. Sam gets strangled again –- that windpipe of his must be made of iron (to match Dean's thighs of steel).</p><p>I interrupt the squee for a grouse. I actually noticed this in the previous episode, but I had already taken it to task for so many points I just let the issue be. However here it was again –- the music for the show. Are they saving money on music rights? You can't tell me they couldn't have found an appropriate song or two. The music here was ok. There was a scene or two in 3.02 that I found grating enough that I even noticed the music. But I was not impressed by the incidental stuff.</p><p>Back to the plot, Dean immediately gets lotto tickets and seems pretty sanguine about the fact that Sam was nearly killed since the guy pulled the trigger on him and, as Dean said, his gun doesn't jam. Sam was about to be shot point blank. Of course the show makes a habit of them brushing off these near misses but you'd think that Dean has got to be living this year in dread that Sam's going to precede him after all.</p><p>Bobby is getting to be exposition guy, taking Ash's place. It makes sense though that Bobby's contributing what he can, and he's always been a home-base hunter. As the first scene of the show with Gordon indicated, he's got quite a reputation among hunters as well. I doubt Sam and Dean are the only ones who tap his knowledge on a regular basis.</p><p>The photo in the restaurant cracked me up -- Dean with his picture-perfect smile and Sam looking pained. We also get more food-scarfing Dean (loved the brain freeze though that ice cream was so runny at that point it's hard to believe he could get one). I also found the way Dean gets ignored altogether and is looking at Bela in astonishment that she was paying no attention to him so funny I totally missed what she was up to. (Of course, it was Sam's lucky day, it could have happened!) Sam's fall? Cracked me up. This episode set a record for physical humor.</p><p>Love the fact that the hapless thieves have a horseshoe over their door. I guess Sam and Dean heard about the death from the guy who patched him up on their way in. Or ran into the body or something since there wasn't a whole lot of time elapsing there.</p><p>Speaking of not much time elapsing, Bobby sure does come up with a solution for that foot pretty quick. It's at best half a day before he has the solution. Why bother building the boxes if he could find a way to destroy the object that quickly? I'm guessing that John wasn't keeping those objects in a "toxic dump" as Sam speculated. I'm guessing he was keeping them as weapons.</p><p>When Sam loses his shoe it played to me as if he and Dean had done this before -- when he was 5 years old. This feeling persisted as Dean dropped Sam off. I'm pretty sure it's not the first time he was told to stay in one place and not move or touch anything.</p><p>Pretty nice motel room that looks less like the usual oddly divided sets (however improbably enormous). I'm curious though why they bothered building the bathroom set since it was never used. You'd think they could have just put a door in there and saved the money.</p><p>The burning A/C unit was pretty funny though as Mike pointed out, there's no way he could have put the fire out like that since it has an outside air vent. I also had to wonder how nervous everyone on set was having JP do his fire stunt and all the pratfalls this episode, given his propensity for injuring himself.</p><p>The scene in Bela's apartment was somewhat improbable. The first issue was the time in which Dean appeared on camera then entered the apartment, messed with the alarm and left a post-it note? Does he generally carry office supplies on his person? I am also assuming, given that Bela left the foot on a kitchen counter far from where we actually saw Dean standing, that he had had it in his pocket from the time in which she was looking at the alarm box (having ducked behind her into the kitchen). So why have the whole dialogue with her? To find out more about her? To discover how she knew about John's storage room (when he didn't)? It would certainly explain the way he was casually waving that gun around while he talked. And I can only assume Bela considered him enough of a threat that she was willing to keep talking instead of just shooting him outright during one of those moments of distraction.</p><p>I did find it very interesting how she viewed hunters, as revenge-driven sociopaths. Can't imagine she had anyone specific in mind for that *cough* though it's a nice touch in an episode where Gordon appears.</p><p>I also have to assume that Sam's life was in no danger from the moment Dean grabbed the foot. Because really, no good luck could ever have counterbalanced Sam's death. Sam's pain however was apparently fair game. Ouch. And I loved the way Dean is perfectly willing to think he's the bomb even if he does know it's the rabbit foot. Batman indeed.</p><p>I'm going to assume Bela was observing them stealthily and thus saw the lotto tickets being tucked in before she appeared. I also quite liked her line about "Who here hasn't shot someone?" She clearly knows quite a lot about the Winchesters, she wasn't just following ghostly directions to that storage unit (speaking of which, who's been paying the bills for that since John died a year ago?)  From a writing standpoint it was a good line. Meaning that with just that one phrase she brings in past character development (Sam killing Jake, Dean killing various people who have become a threat such as in Croatoan and Devil's Trap) and at the same time reveals that her knowledge of the Winchesters runs deeper than was previously revealed. And she sets herself up on the same footing as Sam and Dean, which is pretty questionable, and continues to tell us something about her.</p><p>It's interesting to contrast Bela's knowledge of them with all Sam and Dean don't know about other hunters (or their own parents)! I'm not sure whose post it was about the Edgar Cayce reference, where someone made the intriguing suggestion that Sam and Dean were never raised to be hunters at all. Rather that Sam was raised to defend himself and Dean to defend himself and Sam. From which then, I'd conclude, that Dean's love of hunting was something of a fluke and John really didn't care about Sam hunting but was, as he claimed, concerned about his safety alone. It would explain some of those silences.</p><p>Well, presumably Sam still has the gold watch.</p><p>IIn review, lots of new plot stuff started here. We have Gordon bound to get out and go after Sam. We presumably will see Hendrickson and the general authorities still after the two (having their photos on a website can't be a good thing). We have the likelihood of Bela returning in some further plot development later on. We have the likelihood of John's storage unit returning into play at some point. We have Ruby and her agenda continuing. We have Mary's background developments still to be explained. We have demons possibly after Sam. And, of course, Dean's deal. Whew, that's an awful lot of stuff going on. Really, is there anyone NOT after the Winchesters at this point?  I'm also pleasantly surprised by the fact that I think this season isn't starting out the way people expected. I don't want a show to become completely predictable and I think that as long as it doesn't lose what drew people in to start with, curveballs are a good thing.  </p>
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